Chapter 22 #2
Her mouth pouts its normal pretty pout. She does a poor job of masking her frustration with me. But so far, she’s been the only maid who hasn’t immediately been annoyed.
Quiet, content, she moves through life with a steadfastness of a much older woman.
I ignore her and suck air through my raw nostrils. The fight seeps out of me bit by bit until I’m a hollow empty shell. I walk and I talk like a human. What’s left in me?
Nothing.
I feel Faye staring at me, to the point where I’m forced to shift and meet her gaze.
More than the others, the way she looks at me makes me feel small. Silly for choosing the specific hill I died on.
“You really could have made this work if you weren’t so full of yourself. If you weren’t focused on the bad things that happened to you instead of making the best of your situation, things could be different,” Faye continues with a lazy blink. She shakes her head. “You’re spoiled. Privileged.”
“Do I look spoiled to you?” I ask through tight lips.
She holds firm against the acid in my tone and inhales sharply. “You never learned to check your privilege. You think you’re too good to be one of us.”
Faye slowly pushes up and sleek black strands of her bob fall over her face. She pushes them back behind her ears.
She’s been my neighbor since I arrived and we’ve never spoken. I’ve caught her staring occasionally, but her face is always inscrutable. She’s neither bothered nor interested. Not irritated or curious.
Faye simply… is.
I don’t want to know anything about her.
But if I’m too spoiled to be one of them, then Faye is much too pretty. I’m past the point of being willing to listen to her.
“I’m tired.”
Before I have a chance to roll over and turn off, Faye chuckles. The sound alone is dry enough for me to pay attention.
“There are worse things out there than being a maid. Life is not always kind to us but there is a balance to our position here. You’re about to find out what those worse things are,” she points out.
“I can survive the mines.”
If I say it enough, I’ll believe it.
Faye snorts, the sound covering more laughter. “Stop being so naive. You’ll never make it to the mines that way. And you won’t be able to help anyone if you’re dead. Tossed into the river of lava surrounding the pits. Disposed.”
Maybe it is naive to ignore the way the image of lava lights up the inside of my head, or when the latent fear all women have of being overpowered and brutalized rises.
“Maybe you don’t get it because you weren’t born into the serving class like I was,” Faye continues. “Nobility?”
I don’t answer, which is enough for Faye to interpret the silence correctly.
“I thought as much. It’s in your bearing. Not when you have your nose out of joint, turned all the way up, but when you walk. If you stopped and paid a little attention, you’d see, I’m trying to help you.”
“No one wants to help me without something in return.”
The defiance leaks out of me, replaced with the creeping horror of realization. I’ve messed up. Badly.
Faye stirs and the sheet crinkles in her hands. She pulls it up to her chin. “If you’d bothered to look around you, you’d have found allies. Did you ever look, Morgan? Did you ever see me?”
No. But I can’t give her the answer she wants now, either. A stopper’s been tamped into place and the ugly arguments of the past stay locked away.
Faye’s warning sounds louder than the rest of her whispered reality check. None of the others stir from their beds, though. Most are probably too exhausted to do anything but give themselves to oblivion for the few hours they have before work begins again.
I flop onto my side facing Faye and forcing myself to look at her. To really look at her. I draw my feet under the sheet and thin scratchy cover, shivering.
“If you were really born into the serving class,” I start, “then why do you speak the way you do?”
She acts like she has a better education than most of her standing. She’s smart. She’s looking at me like I’m the failure I am. If she’s insulted by my observation, it never shows.
“You might not want to hear this but you need to, and none of the others are going to tell you to your face,” Faye adds with a sniff, the slight upturn of her own nose twitching. “You’ve royally messed up in so many ways.”
Heat blisters my insides. “What does it matter? Why do you care?”
Every shiver sends the sharp points of the mattress springs further into my bones. It’s like sleeping on a bed of nails.
“I don’t care,” Faye says with a shrug. “Not really. But I see the world for what it is instead of what it could be. Most people really hate the reminder. They see life in shades of hope and optimism. I see realism.”
“Of course, people hate that,” I hiss. “No one wants to be reminded of how horrible things are.”
“Maybe not, but pretending doesn’t change anything. I want change. But I know better than to expect it.”
Our whispered argument is heavy and it curves my bones in toward my organs. “An honest to Ether optimist, then?” I clarify.
There’s more to her than I thought. Faye is right, I purposely kept my distance. To engage is to admit defeat. To speak to any of the other maids is to acknowledge that I’m not Morgan Whyte from Fallkirk anymore.
“Not a cheery one,” Faye agrees. Her eyes go flinty. “My father sold me to the school as a young girl. If I’d done the same as you and fought against my circumstances, then I wouldn’t be here today. I’d be dead. Or worse. They’d send me where they’re going to send you.”
There’s no comfort in her words or the way she peers appraisingly at me.
Once again it strikes me that under different circumstances, Faye would look utterly at home on the arm of some army general, shown off for his benefit. With the right makeup and gown, she’d be downright breathtaking.
She has no place on her hands and knees scrubbing floors or toilets.
She hadn’t had a choice.
“There should always be a choice—” I start to say.
“That’s not life.” She pushes up and stares me dead in the face, driving home the poignancy of the conversation. The cover slips to her lap. “There is always some good in the world, sure. Some are born with more than others but it’s up to you to make the best of your situation. Whatever it is.”
Fury is familiar enough, comforting enough, for me to latch onto. With little prompting, I can make Faye the enemy. It’s easy to focus on her and allow the ruptured tide to pour out toward a single target.
“You expect me to make the best of my family and my village being absolutely murdered by a madman? You’re out of your blighted mind! There is no silver lining in being orphaned. I had my entire future stripped away from me. I was supposed to be a student here.”
Her lips thin and in an unimpressed drawl, she says, “Yes. You’ve told everyone already.”
“What kind of silver lining is there now? You want me to pretend I don’t miss my family?”
This time, her direct eye contact burrows under my skin in the worst way. I glare at Faye and she doesn’t even flinch. Sympathy flashes in those round blue eyes but it disappears in the next second and there is nothing but cold neutrality.
Indifference.
She doesn’t care about me or where I came from. She doesn’t care about my past or how every one of my senses has flipped on to high alert.
“Get over it.” She makes it sound so simple. “Do you think I carry my pain around like some victim’s badge of honor? You think I constantly remind everyone how my father sold me? I’m actually glad he did.”
“Ether curse it all!” My reasoning abandons me. “You can’t expect me to believe you.”
I draw my knees up to my chest, curling into a ball.
Faye leans closer. “I had several brothers and sisters to care for when my mother died. And there was no way for me or my father to make a go of it and support them all. He secured me a safe position in the kitchen. For all my sisters, really. One of them is in the kitchens in the palace and one works for the monks.”
“In other words, it could be worse,” I mock.
It’s about to be worse for me. Maybe that’s why I’m fighting so hard. Why can’t I stop my heart from stumbling or dismay from flooding my system?
“Indentured servitude is horrible but we are all safe and I’m well fed. Neither of those things would be true if I weren’t here.” Faye turns her head away. “It’s a shame you never allowed yourself to learn it.”
Faye, having said her piece, bobs her head decisively and turns back to go to sleep. How long has she been squatting on the desire to ream me out? Was this conversation done out of kindness or a desire to speak her mind whether I actually heard her or not?
My entire body tenses under another wave of cold.
Dragon dung, she got to me.
How will I make up for it now? How can I prove I should be kept at the school when I’ve gouged out a hole for myself and willingly tossed myself inside?
I’ll have to figure something out even if every attempt fails.